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| He then wonderfully displays the Eternal Life, which is Christ, to those who confess Him not, and applies to them the mournful lamentation of Jeremiah over Jehoiakim, as being closely allied to Montanus and Sabellius.
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§2. He
then wonderfully displays the Eternal Life, which is Christ, to those
who confess Him not, and applies to them the mournful lamentation of
Jeremiah over Jehoiakim, as being closely allied to Montanus and
Sabellius.
But now that I have surveyed
what remains of his treatise I shrink from conducting my argument
further, as a shudder runs through my heart at his words. For he wishes
to show that the Son is something different from eternal life, while,
unless eternal life is found in the Son, our faith will be proved to be
idle, and our preaching to be vain, baptism a superfluity, the agonies
of the martyrs all for nought, the toils of the Apostles useless and
unprofitable for the life of men. For why did they preach Christ, in
Whom, according to Eunomius, there does not reside the power of eternal
life? Why do they make mention of those who had believed in Christ,
unless it was through Him that they were to be partakers of eternal
life? “For the intelligence,” he says, “of those who
have believed in the Lord, overleaping all sensible and intellectual
existence, cannot stop even at the generation of the Son, but speeds
beyond even this in its yearning for eternal life, eager to meet the
First.” What ought I most to bewail in this passage? that the
wretched men do not think that eternal life is in the Son, or that they
conceive of the Person of the Only-begotten in so grovelling and
earthly a fashion, that they fancy they can mount in their reasonings
upon His beginning, and so look by the power of their own intellect
beyond the life of the Son, and, leaving the generation of the Lord
somewhere beneath them, can speed onward beyond this in their yearning
for eternal life? For the meaning of what I have quoted is nothing else
than this, that the human mind, scrutinizing the knowledge of real
existence, and lifting itself above the sensible and intelligible
creation, will leave God the Word, Who was in the beginning, below
itself, just as it has left below it all other things, and itself comes
to be in Him in Whom God the Word was not, treading, by mental
activity, regions which lie beyond the life of the Son, there searching
for eternal life, where the Only-begotten God is not. “For in its
yearning for eternal life,” he says, “it is borne in
thought, beyond the Son”—clearly as though it had not in
the Son found that which it was seeking. If the eternal life is not in
the Son, then assuredly He Who said, “I am the life939
,” will be convicted of falsehood, or
else He is life, it is true, but not eternal life. But that which is
not eternal is of course limited in duration. And such a kind of life
is common to the irrational animals as well as to men. Where then is
the majesty of the very life, if even the irrational creation share it?
and how will the Word or Divine Reason940
| 940 ὁ λόγος: the idea
of “reason” must be expressed to convey the force required
for the argument following. | be
the same as the Life, if this finds a home, in virtue of the life which
is but temporary, in irrational creatures? For if, according to the
great John, the Word is Life941
, but that life is
temporary and not eternal, as their heresy holds, and if, moreover, the
temporary life has place in other creatures, what is the logical
consequence? Why, either that irrational animals are rational, or that
the Reason must be confessed to be irrational. Have we any further need
of words to confute their accursed and malignant blasphemy? Do such
statements even pretend to conceal their intention of denying the Lord?
For if the Apostle plainly says that what is not eternal is temporary942
, and if these people see eternal life in the
essence of the Father alone, and if by alienating the Son from the
Nature of the Father they also cut Him off from eternal life, what is
this but a manifest denial and rejection of the faith in the Lord?
while the Apostle clearly says that those who “in this life only
have hope in Christ are of all men most miserable943
.” If then the Lord is life, but not
eternal life, assuredly the life is temporal, and but for a day, that
which is operative only for the present time, or else944
| 944 If we
might read ᾑ for ἢ the sense of the passage would be materially
simplified:—“His life is temporal, that life which operates
only for the present time, whereon those who hope are the objects of
the Apostle’s pity.” |
the Apostle bemoans those who have hope, as having missed the true
life.
However, they who are
enlightened in Eunomius’ fashion pass the Son by, and are carried
in their reasonings beyond Him, seeking eternal life in Him Who is
contemplated as outside and apart from the Only-begotten. What ought
one to say to such evils as these,—save whatever calls forth
lamentation and weeping? Alas, how can we groan over this wretched and
pitiable generation, bringing forth a crop of such deadly mischiefs? In
days of yore the zealous Jeremiah bewailed the people of Israel, when
they gave an evil consent to Jehoiakim who led the way to idolatry, and
were condemned to captivity under the Assyrians in requital for their
unlawful worship, exiled from the sanctuary and banished far from the
inheritance of their fathers. Yet more fitting does it seem to me that
these lamentations be chanted when the imitator of Jehoiakim draws away
those whom he deceives to this new kind of idolatry, banishing them
from their ancestral inheritance,—I mean the Faith. They too, in
a way corresponding to the Scriptural record, are carried away captive to
Babylon from Jerusalem that is above,—that is from the Church of
God to this confusion of pernicious doctrines,—for945
| 945 Altering Oehler’s punctuation. | Babylon means “confusion.” And
even as Jehoiakim was mutilated, so this man, having voluntarily
deprived himself of the light of the truth, has become a prey to the
Babylonian despot, never having learned, poor wretch, that the Gospel
enjoins us to behold eternal life alike in the Father, and the Son, and
the Holy Ghost, inasmuch as the Word has thus spoken concerning the
Father, that to know Him is life eternal946
, and
concerning the Son, that every one that believeth on Him hath eternal
life947
, and concerning the Holy Spirit, that to Him
that hath received His grace it shall be a well of water springing up
unto eternal life948
. Accordingly every
one that yearns for eternal life when he has found the Son,—I
mean the true Son, and not the Son falsely so called—has found in
Him in its entirety what he longed for, because He is life and hath
life in Himself949
. But this man, so
subtle in mind, so keen-sighted of heart, does not by his extreme
acuteness of vision discover life in the Son, but, having passed Him
over and left Him behind as a hindrance in the way to that for which he
searches he there seeks eternal life where he thinks the true Life not
to be! What could we conceive more to be abhorred than this for
profanity, or more melancholy as an occasion of lamentation? But that
the charge of Sabellianism and Montanism should be repeatedly urged
against our doctrines, is much the same as if one should lay to our
charge the blasphemy of the Anomœans. For if one were carefully to
investigate the falsehood of these heresies, he would find that they
have great similarity to the error of Eunomius. For each of them
affects the Jew in his doctrine, admitting neither the Only-begotten
God nor the Holy Spirit to share the Deity of the God Whom they call
“Great,” and “First.” For Whom Sabellius calls
God of the three names, Him does Eunomius term unbegotten: but neither
contemplates the Godhead in the Trinity of Persons. Who then is really
akin to Sabellius let the judgment of those who read our argument
decide. Thus far for these matters.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
